


of water and memory

by aceun



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, BokuAka Week 2020, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reincarnation au if you squint, because these two deserve to find each other in every timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25801702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceun/pseuds/aceun
Summary: “Is there anything I can help you find?” Keiji asks. The man jumps at being addressed and turns towards him.His eyes are gold,Keiji notices with a start.“Ah—no,” he says, face breaking into a brilliant smile. “I’m good! Just looking!”It’s only 9 A.M., and Keiji hasn’t had his coffee yet, so he really can’t be blamed for the way his heart stutters in his chest.[Keiji works at a bookstore, and Bokuto is his favorite visitor.]
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 30
Kudos: 238
Collections: Bokuaka Week 2020





	of water and memory

**Author's Note:**

> [day 1: bookstore au] 
> 
> this was supposed to be a 1k meet-cute but got out of hand and consumed my waking hours for all ten days of bokuaka week. 
> 
> that said, happy bokuaka week!

The weather is cold and crystalline in a way that promises snow. 

Keiji had listened to the forecast before work, tugging on knit socks with a square of toast in his mouth, and had noted the forecaster’s words when they said the chances of this winter’s first snow was slim but not impossible. _Optimists would do well to keep their glasses half full,_ they said. 

Keiji isn’t sure if he considers himself an optimist, but he can’t deny the feeling of weightless suspension he gets around this time of year, as if for the first few weeks of winter, until the first snowfall touches the ground, he’s holding his breath. 

_‘Life’s most fated encounters happen in the first snow,’_ his mother had said to him growing up, often with a wink and a sly glance at his father. 

He holds his parents and their decades long devotion responsible for making him believe in things like soulmates. Maybe it’s the remnants of childhood awe that has him checking the forecast well into his twenties, a piece of romantic memorabilia sitting on the mantlepiece of his mind, gathering dust but not going anywhere. Something kept and remembered half out of sentiment, half out of genuine belief. 

The sky had been drizzling when he unlocked Fukurodani Bookstores this morning, falling in wispy droplets that misted his hair and melted into his scarf. 

He looks at the sky now, pausing from sorting the new shipment to peer out the window, and finds that the rain had stopped. Outside, the world is draped in grey, a color pulled across the sky like a heavy curtain. The mood is anticipatory, as if the orchestra is downstairs tuning in the pit and the audience is murmuring in their rows, the huge stage hushed and prepared as the overhead lights flicker and dim. 

He shakes away these thoughts with a twinge of embarrassment, blaming the season for his sudden dramatics. Kenma would definitely make fun of him if he knew. 

He pulls off the packing tape on the cardboard box and the stretchy sound of the rip echoes through the quiet storage room.

Fukurodani is a small, independent bookstore squeezed in the middle of the downtown district between a cafe and a real estate office. It’s kept afloat by a loyal crowd of regulars who he all knows by name—parents and teachers and college students who sprawl on the armchairs next to the outlet. Keiji had worked at the store immediately after graduating high school and had taken over its management when the old couple who founded it decided to go into retirement. 

He loves this store. He loves its warm lighting, its tan argyle carpet, its old wooden shelves that creak with the weight of volumes and its close cluster of mismatched chairs by the reading nook. He even loves the slightly unsettling cuckoo clock that pops out an hourly owl to hoot out the time. 

Every morning, when he turns on the light and breaths in the smell of paper and oak, it feels like coming home. 

“Anahori,” he calls. Their newest hire pokes his head from the stacks of boxes, nervous at the possibility of having made a mistake. “I’m going out to organize the new titles. Konoha’s at the counter if you have any questions about the shipment,” he says, rolling out a cart packed with books. Anahori nods rapidly, and Keiji tries to give him a reassuring smile before shutting the door. 

Konoha’s chatting with a customer at the register, so Keiji quietly slips away to the recent releases table at the front of the store. He takes down old books from their plastic stands and replaces the display with new titles from his cart. 

In his mind, he starts making plans for the store’s holiday decorations. It’s only November, but most other places had already brought out the tinsel the second Halloween had passed. He wonders if they still have the Santa Furby in the storage room and whether the kids would be afraid of its vaguely demonic eyes when his trail of thought is interrupted by the sound of the entry bell. 

“Welcome to Fukurodani Bookstore,” he says automatically, glancing at the entrance. When he sees that it’s Kuroo, he smiles. 

Kenma had been his roommate ever since undergrad. Kuroo, as his childhood friend and self-declared caretaker, was more or less a package deal. Keiji had long grown used to his comings and goings around their dorm room, and once they graduated, around their shared apartment. It wasn’t uncommon for him to drop by periodically to bring Kenma lunch or to take him to class or to nag at him about his sleep schedule (which was horrific, even by Keiji’s standards). 

Once, on a very memorable occasion, he had even come over to bleach Kenma’s hair, something that Keiji had accidentally stumbled upon in the bathroom and seeing their lack of clothes, greatly misunderstood. 

Privately, Keiji was grateful that Kenma had someone to look out for him when he couldn’t. And for all of Kenma’s complaints about Kuroo’s mothering, he still opened the door for him every time. But there were limits, apparently. At some point, Keiji had asked Kenma if he should get Kuroo a spare set of keys to the house, and Kenma had just stared at him, horrified, until he retracted the offer and promised to never mention it again.

At present, Kuroo spots Keiji and greets him with his typical friendly shout, grinning in that sly way of his that manages to give off an impression of an elaborate scheme or an inside joke that only he was privy to. Even after years of knowing him by proxy, Keiji still wasn’t sure whether he did it on purpose or if his face was just like that. 

Kuroo, looking like a man on a mission, quickly declares that he was off to find a text for school and pats him on the shoulder. Keiji barely has time to be suspicious before Kuroo walks off with the familiar gait of having navigated the store a hundred times. 

Something else tugs at Keiji’s attention. 

Behind Kuroo is a man that Keiji has never seen before. His hair is a light grey streaked with black roots sticking up in pointed tufts on his head. He’s about the same height as Kuroo, which means he’s a few inches taller than Keiji, and has the broad build of an athlete. At the moment, he’s taking in his surroundings, twisting his head around this way and that with wide, unblinking eyes, and the image reminds Keiji so much of an owl that despite himself, a small smile plays on his mouth. 

“Is there anything I can help you find?” Keiji asks. The man jumps at being addressed and turns towards him. _His eyes are gold_ , Keiji notices with a start. 

“Ah—no,” he says, face breaking into a brilliant smile. “I’m good! Just looking!” 

It’s only 9 A.M., and Keiji hasn’t had his coffee yet, so he really can’t be blamed for the way his heart stutters in his chest. 

Keiji nods with what he hopes is a neutral expression and goes back to organizing the display stand, feeling the man’s gaze linger for a second more. He fights the flush trying to creep up his neck and mostly succeeds. 

The man doesn’t go far. 

Keiji, because he’s a professional who has better self-control than to get distracted by attractive customers, does a good job at keeping busy. He finishes up the display stand and rolls his cart to the fiction section, stocking the shelves to include the new releases, cover facing outwards, and adjusting the surrounding books to make space when needed. 

The problem is, it’s almost impossible to ignore him. It’s not that his presence is close enough to be uncomfortable or obtrusive, but Keiji can sense him orbiting around his movements, there in outskirts of his vision. Sometimes he sneaks furtive glances at Keiji before quickly casting his eyes at the shelves the moment he turns his head, suddenly engrossed in whatever’s in front of him. 

It’s ridiculous—he’s ridiculous—and about as discreet as a neon sign, but there’s also something weirdly endearing about his commitment to being hidden, like a pair of little feet sticking out from behind a curtain. 

Keiji guesses that he needs something but doesn’t want to disturb him in his work.

Feeling slightly bemused, Keiji sets down the paperback in his hands and moves to head over to the nonfictions. He pauses where the man is standing, currently staring fixedly with solemn concentration at the sign reading ‘Pregnancy and Childbirth’.

Keiji bites down on a laugh. “Let me know if there’s anything you need. I’ll be more than happy to help you.” 

The man spins around to look at him, the tips of his ears turning bright red. _Cute_. 

He averts his eyes and rubs the back of his neck. “Actually, there is one thing…” he says, trailing off. 

Keiji, a little pleased at having guessed right, waits patiently. 

“I… was wondering if you could recommend me a book?” 

As he says this, the man’s awkward hesitance melts away into an eager smile that hones on Keiji like a beam of light. “I’m not a big reader, but I want to try. What’s your favorite book? Who’s your favorite author? What are the things you like?” 

Recommendations are a given part of Keiji’s job. The personal connection of talking to another human being, another reader, is what attracts people to Fukurodani and has them coming back; it’s what strengthens the ties between the bookstore and the community that supports it.

Keiji has years of experience and knows how to tailor a recommendation to fit a customer’s interests. 

Occasionally, some people would come up to ask for the staff’s picks, and Keiji was prepared for that too. 

But he has never, at least to his knowledge, met someone who made it seem as if their interests were with Keiji, not the books. 

For a few, paralyzing seconds, Keiji doesn’t know what to say. Then he looks at the man’s face, happy with curiosity and unclouded with ulterior motive, and chides himself for being conceited. 

“I could recommend one of my favorites,” he begins, careful, “but I think I can better help find a book for you if I know your own preferences.” 

The man registers this with a blink and bobs his head hastily. “Right, right, that makes sense.” He hums in thought, finger to his chin. “Well, I remember liking _Lord of the Rings_. It had lots of adventure and cool settings and fun characters—but it was really long,” he interjects, eyes comically big with alarm. “Maybe something shorter?” 

Keiji nods, several ideas forming in his mind. “Follow me, please.” 

He leads them three rows down and slows to a stop once he finds what he was looking for, gently pulling the book from its shelf and turning around to hold up the cover for the man to see. 

“This one is shorter than _Lord of the Rings_ , but it has a similar premise of a character burdened with an important and dangerous quest,” Keiji explains. The man’s gold eyes are staring at him, shining with rapt, singular attention. 

He continues, slightly flustered. “There’s lots of interesting creatures and a diverse cast of characters. The world-building is immersive and pacing of the tension is masterful; I found myself unable to put it down until I finished. If you like adventure with a little humor that doesn’t shy away from exploring some heavier themes, you might enjoy this novel.” He pauses for breath, feeling a bit of self-consciousness creep in at his next words. “It’s also one of my personal favorites.” 

With this, Keiji hands over the book, expecting him to open the flap and take a closer look at the publisher’s description. Instead he takes it, and without even glancing down or missing a beat, says, “It’s perfect. It’s just what I was looking for! I’ll read it, and when I finish, I’ll come back to find you so I can tell you how much I loved it.”

Keiji, stunned by the sudden declaration, catches himself nodding. He furrows his brows in confusion. “But you haven’t even read it yet.” 

The man grins in response, and Keiji feels transfixed, rooted to the spot by the full force of his smile and its almost overwhelming brightness. _He could compete with the sun_ , Keiji thinks, lightheaded. 

He corrects himself. _He could compete with the sun and win._

“I’m Bokuto Kotarou,” he—Bokuto—says, still smiling. 

“Akaashi Keiji,” he replies. 

The introduction feels—charged. As if they’re not in a bookstore where Keiji is a worker and Bokuto is a customer but are standing in a different plane, one separate from the present, where they are at the center and everything else is lightyears away.

They stare for a while. Probably too long. There’s a quiet intensity in Bokuto’s eyes that wasn’t there before, a thoughtful kind of seriousness that’s made all the more stark in the context of his usual exuberance. 

Keiji tries to grab for something to say, a foothold in this strange moment, when the door to the storage room opens with a conspicuous creak. 

“Akaashi? Do you have a second?” 

It’s Anahori. 

Keiji tears his eyes away, swivels his head, and lifts his feet to find his employee over the wooden shelves. “I’ll be there in a moment,” he calls, heart racing as if he’d been caught doing something illicit. Anahori, sensing nothing out of the ordinary, nods gratefully and heads back inside. 

Keiji turns around to face Bokuto and finds that his face the picture of affable ease, seemingly unruffled by the interruption and the whole tense exchange before it. Dazed, Keiji wonders the likelihood of having imagined the whole thing.

“Konoha can help you check out,” are the words his mouth supplies. Keiji’s eyes flicker from the book to its holder. “I…” He’s at a loss for what to say. A dozen responses flash through his mind in less than a second. None of them are right. He thinks of a dozen more.

Bokuto saves him before he can spiral, waving the book in the air with energetic cheer. “I’ll see you soon, Akaashi! Thanks for the recommendation!” 

It turns out that not only is Bokuto’s smile overwhelming, it’s also infectious. Keiji finds himself relaxing into Bokuto’s easy demeanor, a small smile of his own tugging at his mouth. 

“Of course. I hope you like it.” 

* * *

A minute later, Keiji enters the storage room and glances out the window. 

The clouds, bunched together in their cryptic huddle, crawl across the sky.

* * *

For the rest of the week, Keiji busies himself with the shop, decorating its interior with holiday items and allowing himself to be persuaded by Komi and Sarukui, Fukurodani’s other part-timers, that the Santa Furby was an essential centerpiece to the store’s aesthetic. 

There’s not much room to be distracted, not when the foot traffic during the cusp of the winter season increases as more and more people stream into the shop, escaping the cold and ducking inside to get a head start on their New Years Resolution reading lists. Even during their slowest hours, there’s three or four people wandering around the shelves at all times, light chatter suffusing through the store like the smell of Konoha’s mulled cider fragrance oils. 

And yet, there’s a part of Keiji that still perks up every time the entry bell rings and sinks down in disappointment when the person at the door is not who he thinks it is. 

By the time the next Sunday rolls around, he’s managed to convince himself that the whole thing had been a pleasant but otherwise isolated encounter with a friendly customer. It was pointless to build his hopes up on a half-promise that, now that he was looking back on it, was more of a polite formality than anything substantial. 

It’s half an hour before closing and Keiji is on a ladder fixing the string of lights lining the wall next to the entrance, which had flickered on and off all day in what was most likely a problem with the wiring. 

Konoha’s outside talking to the man who’s fixing their HVAC system. Aside from Keiji, the only other presence in the room is the soft tick of the cuckoo clock on the other side of the store. 

He’s used to the quiet, the way it drapes over his shoulders, heavy and comforting. 

The door bangs opens with a cheery jangle. 

“ _Akaashi!_ ” 

Keiji likes to think he isn’t the type to easily startle. But added to the fact that he hadn’t been expecting anyone, there are very few people in his life who call his name with such loud exuberance that to hear it shouted now makes him jolt in surprise—which was a mistake. 

The ladder tilts with his sudden movement. Keiji’s body lurches off balance. He pitches backwards. Gravity pulls. He braces himself for a painful impact with the ground. 

Instead he lands crushed against something soft and solid. 

He feels a pair of arms wrapping around his knees and shoulders.

He breaths in the smell of the outside, the cold air still clinging to their skin. 

He registers as his weight is caught and carried and placed gently on the floor with the kind of floaty detachment of a spirit watching from the ceiling. 

Keiji pulls himself together. 

He stands on his feet, grateful that they’ve decided to take mercy on him and hold him up without collapsing. His heart is still racing, adrenaline jumping wild in his veins, but he’s unscathed. 

Keiji turns around to face Bokuto, who looks drained of all color and at least twice more terrified than him, the one who had fallen. 

It’s then that his brain catches up to the last ten seconds, to the painfully vivid memory of _slipping from a ladder_ and _being held in a bridal carry_ , and he wonders if he’s either killed or saved someone in a past life, to deserve this. 

Keiji doesn’t even have time to feel embarrassed, too caught up in the flurry of words that is Bokuto’s rapid-fire worry. He finds himself patting his shoulder in comfort, feeling wrapped in a blanket of strange calm. “I’m alright, I’m alright. No, I’m not hurt. Thank you for catching me.” 

Bokuto, mollified after listening to more of Keiji’s reassurances, finally steps back. 

He looks unchanged from the last time Keiji saw him—all ridiculous, gravity defying hair and wide, earnest eyes. 

“I almost killed you, Akaashi. At least let me buy you coffee?” Bokuto says, peeling off his coat. 

He’s wearing a grey henley that clings to his biceps, which is unfair considering how much mental effort Keiji put into not thinking about Bokuto this week only for those arms, and the memory of how they had wrapped around Keiji, to now haunt his every waking moment. 

Because Keiji is weak and apparently already in the habit of giving in to Bokuto’s whims, he says yes, adding a condition that Bokuto will have to wait until he finishes closing up the store, which Bokuto agrees to enthusiastically. 

When Konoha comes back inside, Bokuto jumps up to greet him with the loud familiarity of an old friend. They’ve met exactly once—back when Bokuto first bought his book—but that doesn’t seem to matter. They hit it off almost immediately. Not only that, while Keiji had been helping Anahori in the storage room that day, Bokuto had apparently befriended every single staff member of Fukurodani and a handful of bystanders shopping at the time.

Konoha slings his arms around his shoulder as the two chat boisterously like long lost brothers. 

Moving behind the checkout counter to organize the register for tomorrow, Keiji reflects with envy and no small admiration over how Bokuto is just _good with people_ , his presence as natural as sunlight pouring in through an open window. Bokuto radiates happiness with the uncomplicated innocence of small children and dogs—everyone is a friend. 

Keiji had none of that ease. 

Keiji is quiet, stiff, serious, at times too blunt to walk the fine lines of socialization and at others too polite to form any kind of real connection. He knows he’s hard to get close to. People have told him this much before—some obliquely, some with bitter, cutting swipes. It stung, at first, but he had mostly accepted it as something he couldn’t change and told himself it was fine as it was. 

Only now does he feel his hand knock against the glass wall, against his own limitations, as something like want tugs at his chest. 

“ _Akaashi_ ,” Bokuto calls, closer than expected. Keiji lifts his head to find that he’s already right in front of him—Keiji hadn’t even felt him approach. 

And it’s the sudden proximity combined with the way Bokuto says his name, leaning into it with emphasis, as if it was an essential prefix that gave the rest of his words meaning, that makes the tips of Keiji’s ears grow warm. 

He hears Konoha from the doorway, announcing he’s on his way out. The two of them turn to see him leave and say their goodbyes—mortifyingly—in sync. 

Once the door closes, Bokuto faces him with a pout and an accusatory whine that Keiji would not be impressed with under normal circumstances, but nothing about Bokuto or the past half hour has fallen into the realm of normal, so Keiji just lets himself be further endeared by Bokuto’s ridiculousness with the acceptance of a man settling into his fate. 

“ _Akaashi_ , you haven’t even asked me if I’ve finished the book yet!”

Keiji counts the change in the register and opens another roll of coins. “Have you finished the book yet?” He asks dutifully. 

Bokuto places his palms flat on the counter and breaks into the eager smile of a kid fetching for a gold star. “I finished the book! You were right, of course. It was _incredible_.” 

He then proceeds to launch into a thorough retelling of his reaction to every major plot event complete with sound effects and hand motions. Keiji listens to it all, feeling fond and woozy in a way that has him wondering if he had been wrong earlier and did, in fact, hit his head coming down.

“Though there was one part I didn’t get,” he says, pausing with a puzzled frown. 

“The ending,” Keiji guesses, and Bokuto nods. 

“Yeah—why did the protagonists all agree to give up their memories and go their separate ways? Sure they were strangers at first, but didn’t they all become like family in the end?” His elbows slump, drained of spirit, as he rests his chin on the counter. “I don’t get it. What if they never meet again?” 

In the book, the memory loss and the forced parting had been the price the protagonists had to pay in exchange for saving the world. It fulfilled the purposes of the plot, and that was the technical explanation, but Keiji had the feeling that answer wouldn’t satisfy Bokuto. It didn’t answer the question, the same question that Keiji reached after his first read. 

“From what I remember,” Keiji begins, slowly, thoughtful, “the book ended in the tone of hope—of promise. Maybe the author was trying to say that for something to begin, something else has to end. It doesn’t make that time any less meaningful or that they aren’t changed by it, just that maybe memory is stored somewhere deeper than the mind.” 

“As for going their separate ways,” he says, knowing that in any other context he would be too embarrassed to voice these thoughts out-loud but unable to stop his current momentum, “maybe for some people, there’s no such thing as a permanent goodbye. They’ll meet each other in a different life, in a different way, because their bonds transcend the limitations of distance or memory.” 

When he had told Bokuto that this book was one of his favorites, he meant it. There was always a bittersweet ache that lingered after finishing a good novel, but this had felt different, as if sometime during his read, the story had reached into his chest and carved a space for it there, leaving him fundamentally changed. There had been a reluctance to let the characters go but also the realization that they will never leave. That to some extent, he carried them with him, and they lived on. 

Keiji hears himself grow quiet, contemplative. “Maybe instead of closing the door with a clear conclusion, the author wanted to keep it open with possibility.”

“A story that never ends,” Bokuto says, understanding. 

He looks at Keiji as if he’s the answer to a question that had long since been on his mind.

“Akaashi, you’re kind of amazing,” he declares, both with complete sincerity and utter nonchalance, as if he didn’t know the impact of his own words, as if he didn’t blaze into Keiji’s life last week and pull him, dizzily, out of orbit.

Keiji has never been more out of his depth. 

He jerks his head back to the cash register, saying something about needing to finish quickly if they wanted to make it to the cafe before closing hour. To this, Bokuto squawks in realization and promises to keep his mouth shut, which lasts a total of ten seconds before he discovers the Santa Furby standing on its perch next to the bookmarks and declares it to be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He proceeds to make all sorts of cooing noises at the unholy creature and take no less than a dozen pictures from different angles. 

At first, Keiji had thought this was a joke, up until the point where Bokuto had turned to him with genuine stars in his eyes and asked where he could buy one of his own.

After shutting the lights and locking the door, Bokuto and Keiji walk to the cafe, place their orders, and find an empty table by the windows, the former chatting enthusiastically the whole time. He doesn’t seem to mind that Keiji is mostly content to listen and even remarks at one point, sheepishly rubbing his neck, that no one has let him go on for so long before without begging him to stop, which fills Keiji with a brief, irrational fury at the people who had interrupted Bokuto in the past.

“By the way, Akaashi,” Bokuto says as they’re sitting down with their drinks, “could you recommend me another book?” 

He looks almost—shy—asking this, which astonishes Keiji considering that fact that Bokuto had just told him the story of when he was a kid and, in protest, had stripped down to his underwear in the middle of the supermarket. 

He nudges Keiji with his foot. “Maybe next time we can skip the whole me-scaring-you-off-a-ladder part and start talking about the book from the get-go,” he teases with a smile. 

Keiji, already feeling flutters of anticipation at the idea of a next time, gives him the recommendation. 

It only fills him with a little bit of guilt knowing that he’s not so much looking forward to talking about the book than he is about seeing him again. 

He doesn’t have long to linger on it, because Bokuto then springs the question of why he’s working at the bookstore. 

Keiji finds it surprisingly easy to tell him his story: stumbling upon the building in elementary school, finding solace in its shelves, visiting during his spare time and eventually starting to work there. How he found that as he grew, so did the bookstore and its importance to him, occupying more and more of his life until it eventually encompassed it. 

They talk some more after that. 

Keiji learns that Bokuto plays volleyball on the Division 2 League as an outside hitter. He also learns that when Bokuto talks about the sport, he lights up from head to toe, charged with an energy that could power several suns, hands waving wildly as he demonstrates a play or recounts a tale from practice.

“And it _sucks,_ Akaashi, because I was so hyped for the game and then my entire lunch fell to the ground just like that.” Bokuto covers his face and groans. “I didn’t even bring my wallet. That threw me off for the rest of the scrimmage, knowing how _hungry_ I’d be later that afternoon.”

Keiji nods, cupping his hot coffee in his hands. “I can see how that could have affected your play.” 

“ _Right?_ ” Bokuto brings his palms down on the table with a thump _,_ eyes wide. After a pause, he deflates back in his chair, rubbing his neck. “I know I shouldn’t let these things get to me anymore—I’m not in high school.” He scrunches his brows. “But it’s sometimes so hard to get my brain to focus on the right thing, especially before a game.”

“Like all that excitement is a double-edged sword,” Keiji suggests. “Quick to be built up but also quick to be brought down.” 

Bokuto’s jaw drops open and Keiji is once again struck by how expressive his face is, every emotion shining there as clear as day. “ _Exactly_. You understand!” 

Keiji hums softly. “I understand.” He blows on his cup and takes a careful sip. “Have you tried setting up a pre-game routine?” 

Bokuto tilts his head. 

“A solid, reliable pre-game routine that puts you in the right frame of mind before every game,” he explains. “Like listening to a playlist or shuffling cards or taking a power nap on the way there. It doesn’t have to be those three things, but having any kind of repeatable action to fall back on might help train your brain to be less sensitive to other distractions.” 

Bokuto goes quiet. 

For a second, Keiji feels a flare of panic, familiar as a reflex, and thinks that he’s overstepped his bounds. 

But before he can spiral, he catches the expression on Bokuto’s face and, having recognized it, stops. 

It’s the same intense stare he had seen at the end of their first meeting, when he had met Bokuto’s eyes and found reflected there a well of concentration. Bottomless. So much so that Keiji feels the urge to drop a coin and watch it get swallowed up, winking all the way down the darkness of his pupils. He wants to stand still and see how deep it goes. 

Bokuto, he’s beginning to realize, is everything but surface level. 

And Keiji wants more. 

He wants to be able to read him, open him up like a well-worn novel, fluent in the creases of its spine and the ink on its pages, dog-eared and annotated and known inside out, between the lines, better than anyone. 

It’s a kind of want that he’s never felt before—selfish and insatiable. 

It terrifies him. 

“A pre-game routine,” Bokuto echoes thoughtfully. 

And Keiji knows, in some instinctive, impossible way, that Bokuto has taken the advice to heart. 

He sets his coffee down on the table and locks his fingers together—an old habit, comforting in the newness of whatever this was turning out to be. “I used to play volleyball in high school,” he says, feeling a wash of warmth when Bokuto beams in response. “I was a setter. Our team didn’t make it to nationals the time I was there, but it was a good memory regardless.” 

“Did you like playing?” 

Keiji opens his mouth to says yes but finds himself hesitating. Did he? He did his best in practice. He got along with his teammates and coaches. He played in a way that no one could find fault with. 

“I don’t know,” he ends up saying, truthful. “I didn’t particularly dislike it. I think…” 

He remembers the hollow feeling of exhaustion after the end of every match, the same numbness whether it was a win or a loss, murky as a night smudged dark with no stars. 

“I think I wasn’t inspired.”

He glances at Bokuto, whose love for volleyball overflows and spills from his person like it can’t be contained, a tidal wave that crashes on shore and spares nothing from its touch. 

He wonders if things could have been different if they had attended the same high school, played on the same team. He wonders if they would have made good partners. 

He flushes at the last thought and chides himself for being too presumptuous.

He hears Bokuto hum, pensive. “It’s too bad we didn’t go to the same high school, Akaashi. I wish I could’ve spiked one of your tosses.”

Keiji sits, stunned, as Bokuto smiles at him from across the table. 

“I bet they were the best!” 

* * *

Bokuto becomes something of a regular. 

He comes by roughly once a week, always around the store’s closing hour. They settle into a routine—Bokuto waits while Keiji closes up shop, they walk to the cafe next door, and they sit at the table by the window, where they chat briefly about whatever book Keiji gave him last and then about everything else, talking as the sky turns darker in shades and then plunges into black, the hours slipping away.

Sometime at the end of their second meeting, Bokuto had gotten hold of Keiji’s phone to input his contact. Bokuto being Bokuto had added a string of emojis to his name, which Keiji had sighed at on principle but inwardly had no intention of changing, and then declared he was doing the same to Akaashi’s but refused to show him which ones he chose. 

It had taken a while for Keiji to get used to his phone buzzing during the day. 

After the first few times of Konoha catching him smiling at his screen, he restrains himself to checking his texts on his way home, if only to escape the knowing wiggle of his assistant manager’s eyebrows. 

And Keiji is— _happy_. 

He’d forgotten how easy it could be to relax into the rhythms of a new friendship, free from the paralyzing fear of a misstep, and Bokuto, he realizes, makes him feel _held—_ solid and sure and as constant as the sun. Even being in the same room as him is enough to make him feel at peace, as if they world had swayed and settled comfortably into balance. 

For the rest of the month, the forecasts tease the possibility of snow. 

Keiji finds himself forgetting to check. 

* * *

“So how long have you two been dating?” Konoha asks casually. 

Keiji’s hands, working through a rope of tinsel that had tangled sometime during the day, freeze in place. “It’s… we’re not?”

Konoha stops whatever he’s doing on the calculator to shoot him a look, skeptical. “It’s been over a month of your after-work dates.” 

“…Dates?”

“Akaashi,” Konoha throws his hands in the air. “Those weren’t _book club meetings_.” 

He must read whatever is on Keiji’s face because his own goes slack with disbelief. “Jesus Christ. Were they actually book club meetings?” 

The thing is, Keiji knows, deep down, what Konoha had meant. 

He had felt the shift. 

Some point after the first time Bokuto made him hiccup with laughter and before the time he had offered to cook him dinner, there was a moment where Keiji had looked at Bokuto’s face and thought— _oh._

And that was that. 

If Keiji sees Bokuto as more than a friend, then it is something for him to bear on his own. 

The last thing Keiji wants is to take more than Bokuto was willing to give, to push his limits. 

He has already given him more than enough, and Bokuto is so unflinchingly _good_ , so generous in his affections, that Keiji wonders if it’s okay for him to have even this. It’s a doubt that him pausing, nervous to step into Bokuto’s life and take up more space than he’s allowed, even though Bokuto has thrown open the door with such unrestrained hospitality.

A part of him hesitates. 

The other part of him hopes. 

It’s a hope mixed with guilt, wrapped in the thin excuses he leans on to see him every week, book after book after book. It flares alive every time Bokuto leans in too close or looks at him too long or presses his hand flat against his saying— _look, Akaashi, your fingers are longer_ —and sends his heart flying to his throat with the fear that he could feel his pulse hammering in his palm and then, oh god, he’d _know_. 

“Akaashi,” Konoha presses, and when Keiji looks up, he sees his face scrunched in a grimace, the way it twists when he’s about to say something Keiji doesn’t want to hear ( _our numbers have dipped from last month’s, there’s been a mix-up with the shipments, their agent called and canceled the signing_ ). 

“I say this with love, but you’ve got to get out of your head.”

Konoha crosses his arms, pinning Keiji with a sharp half-smile. “You think too much, and it leads you down pessimistic rabbit holes.” 

Keiji’s occasionally spiraling thoughts were a storm enclosed safely behind his impenetrable, expressionless face, one that few people knew how to spot the signs for and fewer how to stop. 

He should have known that Konoha, who had come to Fukurodani around the same time as Keiji and was as intuitive as he was clever, would have learned to read him by now. 

After all, he’d been by his side during the hardest period of his life.

Before the previous owners had retired and passed down the mantle to Keiji, the truth was that the bookstore had long been in decline. Feeling moved by his love for Fukurodani, the owners had listened to his request and let him attempt to revive it instead of giving up and liquidating their inventory, but he knew it was reckless of him, clinging to sentiment and a half-finished business administration minor, to declare that he’ll save the old bookstore no matter what it took. 

And it did take—mercilessly. 

Between finishing his degree and keeping the store afloat, Keiji had barely scraped enough hours in the day to shut his eyes. But every time he felt his resolve start to slip, pressed by deadlines and fatigue and the looming threat of going out of business, Konoha had been there to prop him up with unshakeable confidence and a prodigious knack for being everywhere at once. 

From finances to marketing to customer service, Keiji could always rely on Konoha to pull through in whatever field he covered.

He valued his insight, but more than that, Keiji trusted him. 

“You know,” Konoha says, “you should see the way he looks at you, when he comes to pick you up. Anahori even asked me if he was your husband last week. _Husband_ ,” Konoha enunciates, eyebrows flying to his sandy fringe. 

Keiji looks down at his hands as hope wraps its tendrils tentatively around his heart and _squeezes_. 

Konoha makes a small noise of surprise. “Though he usually just comes inside instead of peaking in through the window.” 

Keiji turns his head to where Konoha is looking just in time to catch a flash of familiar grey hair darting out of sight. 

He stands up, the tinsel on his lap falling to the carpet. “Sorry, Konoha. Could you—”

“No problem,” Konoha interrupts, smiling. “I’ll close up shop. Go.”

Keiji grabs his coat and hurries out the door. 

When he steps out, Bokuto is there, as if summoned by the force of his thoughts, frozen a few feet away from the window, guilt splayed over his features. 

“You could have come inside?” Keiji says, caught off guard by his expression and hearing his voice tilt into a question. 

He walks over to where he stands, his heart a stuttering beat of staccato notes. 

He feels like a cart climbing up towards the peak of a rollercoaster, clunky and tense. He’s hyper-aware of all his limbs in a way that’s awkward and strange and foreign being associated with Bokuto, who usually makes him feel so at ease.

In a flash of clarity, he realizes that this has been the longest they’ve gone without seeing each other. There’s no set arrangement to their meetings so Keiji shouldn’t—couldn’t—be disappointed that it had been over a week since their last. 

But he had missed him. 

The truth of it cracks open in his chest, raw and aching. Keiji looks at Bokuto, at the way he doesn’t seem to be meeting his eyes, and feels confusion twist through him like a sprain. 

Spurred by the urge for things to return to normal, he hears himself reaching, desperately, for the solid ground of something familiar. “It’s bit late, but we could go to the cafe. There’s this book—”

“ _No!_ ” 

His stomach drops, a star collapsing into itself. 

Keiji knows his eyes are wide. He wishes he had the control to smooth his facial expression, to gather up his scattered defenses and hide the flash of hurt under a layer of calm. He wishes he was calm. He wishes this didn’t feel so much like a rejection, a physical blow to a nursing bruise. 

Bokuto winces. “No, I mean—I mean that’s not what I meant. I would love to, Akaashi, I really, really would. But I can’t. At least not yet, is what I’m trying to say. I’m not ready. I mean I still haven’t…” Bokuto looks pained. “I shouldn’t have come here. I just—It’s just not a good time,” he finishes, eyes pleading with Keiji to understand. 

“I understand,” he lies, nodding slowly. He has never felt more lost. “If you need to go, I won’t keep you much longer.” 

Bokuto backs away, apologetic. “I’m sorry.” 

He leaves with hurried steps, glancing back at Keiji one more time before disappearing around the corner. 

Keiji forces himself to walk the other way. 

His head is a rush of white noise, thoughts crowding and overlapping over each other, scrambling to find purchase. Why was Bokuto acting so strangely? Did he know? He must know. Had Keiji been that transparent? He tries to remember what Bokuto was like the last time they met, whether he had been awkward and evasive and Keiji just hadn’t noticed the signs. Did Bokuto feel burdened? They didn’t have to meet. It would be fine. 

Keiji pushes aside the part of him that protests at this last thought.  


It feels like a hole has rotted through his chest, wet plaster crumbling to reveal a bottomless void of roiling nausea. 

He flinches as something cold and wet lands on his cheek. 

He looks up at the sky and stares as it grows darker by degrees. 

Early that morning, they said it would snow. 

As he walks home, the sharp sound of the rain slapping the pavement feels like a wake-up call. 

* * *

“It’s raining,” Kenma says. In his flat voice, it sounds like an accusation. 

Keiji nods, shrugging off his coat and stepping out of his shoes. “I forgot to bring an umbrella,” he admits, shivering as the warm air of the apartment meets the frozen wetness of his skin. 

Kenma disappears into his bedroom and reappears with a towel and a hot-pack, pressing both into Keiji’s hands with an assessing gaze. 

“Thanks,” he says, moving to sit on the couch and dry his hair. 

Kenma goes over to the kitchen area and pulls out two mugs. Keiji watches blankly as he fills it with coffee from the pot and places them in the microwave to reheat. He turns to face Keiji. 

“What happened?” He demands. 

Keiji knew better, now, then to try to hide things from Kenma, who picked apart weaknesses in his gameplay with surgical precision and was perceptive in a way that bordered on frightening. 

Keiji folds his used towel and places it on the low table. “He came by today.” 

“The guy you met from work?” 

Keiji squeezes the hot pack in his hands. “Yes.” 

He’s mentioned Bokuto to Kenma before, back when he wasn’t sure how long he would stick around and kept things vague to play down its importance. Most people who approached him walked off, bored, after he didn’t meet their expectations. 

Only Bokuto had stayed. 

The memory of Bokuto’s face as he backed away in panic flashes in his mind. 

His chest constricts. 

Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t get around to telling Kenma his name. 

He hears the microwave beep and then a pair of feet shuffling towards the couch. Kenma hands him his mug and goes over to sit on his armchair, curled on his side with his feet tucked under him, waiting.

Keiji takes a sip of his coffee and sets it back down, stabbed with the echo of the cafe. 

“I don’t think he’ll be coming around anymore,” he says. 

Kenma just stares at him with an inscrutable look, gears turning in his head. Something on his face must click for his eyes to widen then narrow with a small hiss. “Has he been ghosting you?” 

Keiji frowns— _has he?_

“It’s not like that,” he ends up saying. “I just…” 

It’s just that for years, loneliness has calcified and collected on his skin like a layer of rust. And for years, he’s accepted things for the way they were: fixed and unchangeable. He had been realistic. He had been rational. He had been safe. 

But this past month, all of that has been scraped and scrubbed away until Keiji was soft underbelly and no protective shell. 

He locks his fingers together, feeling exposed and convinced that he drove Bokuto away with the force of his own want. His voice comes out quiet. 

“For once, I just want to keep a friend without messing things up.” 

“You’ve kept me,” Kenma says, matter-of-fact. 

Despite everything, a rush of warmth fills his chest at those words, and he feels grateful for his own luck, that when he first walked into his dorm room all those years ago, he’d found this person with cat-like eyes and overgrown roots hunched over a PSP, who had asked Keiji to close the door and then never asked him to leave. 

“Yes,” he concedes, “but at no point have I wanted to kiss you,” he adds with a wry smile. 

Kenma blinks. “Do you want to kiss him?” 

Keiji lets out a quiet sigh, drained of all fight and letting Kenma interpret it as he will. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was, but it crashes over him now as he sinks his head into the couch. 

The room descends into comfortable silence. 

Kenma looks at him thoughtfully and says, “If you need a distraction, Kuroo’s been hanging around with this guy…” He scrunches up his face. “He seems a bit dumb, but he looks just like your type. I could have him introduce you.”

Keiji shakes his head, caught between laughing and crying. “As much as I’m tempted by that glowing review, I’m fine.” 

The truth is, he can’t imagine being with anyone who isn’t Bokuto. 

He had barged into his life like a meteor shower, blazing bright and hurtling fast and leaving deep craters in his wake, holes he doesn’t know how to fill. 

Keiji looks down at his hands, at his tightly joined fingers.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, mostly to himself. “I just need time.”

* * *

Bokuto doesn’t contact him the next day. 

Keiji throws himself into his work and barely looks at his phone. He refuses to engage with the dread that rots in the pit of his stomach. He ignores the whispers in his head that say that everything is irrevocably, permanently ruined. He fills his mind with inventory spreadsheets and holiday sales, author signings and staff paychecks. He avoids the window, just on the off chance that he might be tempted to look outside. 

Konoha shoots him pointed looks the entire afternoon but, mercifully, doesn’t say anything. 

The following morning, he’s going over logistics with Komi by the counter when he hears the entry bell ring. 

“Akaashi,” Komi interjects.

“Yes, I know, the minute price differences can be a pain to keep track of, but the publishers—”

Komi tugs at his sleeve. “No, I mean, _Akaashi_.” 

Keiji looks up and locks eyes with Bokuto. 

He looks as if he ran here. His cheeks are flushed, his coat unbuttoned, his wool hat hanging crookedly off his head.

Keiji’s first thought is to worry that he’ll catch a cold. 

His second thought is to turn around as if he didn’t see anything and hide in the storage room. 

Keiji stands motionless, not a single part of him prepared to have this encounter. “I’m… I’m a bit busy at the moment.” 

“Please Akaashi,” Bokuto says, sounding out of breath. “It’s important.” 

Keiji makes the mistake of glancing at Komi, who only guffaws and clasps his hand on his shoulder, pushing him forward. “Go ahead. I can ask Konoha if I have any questions.” 

“Right,” he intones, feeling his last hope clang shut behind him. “Let me just grab my coat.” 

Keiji doesn’t exactly hide in the storage room, but he spends a while contemplating whether it was worth it to escape through its window. 

When he steps outside the store, properly, using the front door, Bokuto is waiting for him underneath the awning. 

It’s a cold day, overcast and wintery. The Christmas lights illuminating the storefront display cast his face in red and green glows as he leans in close to the glass, watching with childlike glee as the toy train spins its merry course around the town of stacked books. 

A rush of fondness, reflexive, kicks his chest. 

“I really can’t stay long,” Keiji says cautiously, unsure why he’s here and expecting the worst. Bokuto’s head whips around at the sound of his voice. “Storytelling is in half an hour and I haven’t set up the chairs yet…” 

Bokuto nods, face turning serious. “I can help you with that. But Akaashi, this really couldn’t wait.” 

Keiji holds himself very still. 

Bokuto exhales, his breath fogging white in the air. “I’m sorry, Akaashi.” 

His heart climbs in his throat. 

“I’m really really really sorry,” he continues. “It was super shitty of me to run away on that night, but I panicked because I thought you were going to find out.” 

“Find out?” Keiji echoes, numb with dread. 

“That I’m bad at reading.” 

Keiji blinks, bewildered at what he just heard. “What?” 

“I’m bad at reading,” Bokuto repeats, pink-cheeked. “I’m awful at it—ever since I was a kid. It’s hard for my brain to concentrate on the words on the page, so I get frustrated and stop. A lot of the times I go several paragraphs without absorbing anything it said.” He hunches his shoulders, hiding his chin behind the collar of his coat. “It takes me longer to finish a book than everyone else, but I didn’t want you to find out that I was having a hard time and stop recommending me stuff to read.” 

“I—” Keiji feels vaguely faint. “So you weren’t staying away because you wanted us to stop meeting?” 

Bokuto’s mouth drops open. “Stop meeting? Akaashi, I wanted to see you every single day!” 

Keiji’s doubt is a stubborn, sticky thing, but against Bokuto’s earnest words and his bright gaze, it doesn’t stand a chance, shriveling and disintegrating as its remnants get carried away by the passing breeze.

“I was staying away because I didn’t finish the book yet,” he confesses. “The sentences were a bit harder than the other ones, so it was taking me a long time. I wanted to be prepared so that when I saw you, I could talk to you about it if you asked.”

“It’s more than worth it,” he jumps in to add, seeing Keiji’s troubled expression. “You probably don’t know, but Akaashi, you get this look on your face whenever you talk about books…” Bokuto breaks into a soft smile, remembering. “You really love it. And I love what you love! I would read a thousand books for you, Akaashi, if I knew it would make you happy.” 

Bokuto’s smile widens, and his golden eyes flash as they stare into his own. 

“I like you a lot, Akaashi Keiji.”

Like a tide receding, all the breath leaves Keiji’s body. 

He didn’t know how Bokuto could do that, wear his heart on his sleeve as if he had nothing to hide from the world, as if his feelings for Keiji were a given, universal truth that cost him nothing to admit, as if his words just now didn’t cause a cosmic shift, the birth of a galaxy, spitting hot stars into the fabric of his universe, casting light into every corner. 

Bokuto’s sincerity is bone-deep and a category for a minor miracle, all on its own.

Like a flood, relief rushes in. 

Keiji feels certain, now, that wherever he stood, Bokuto would always meet him where he was. 

“I like you too,” he answers quietly. His ears are warm. 

Bokuto stumbles back in shock. “You do?” He frowns. “Even though I can’t read?” 

Keiji heaves a sigh wrapped in fond exasperation, thinking faintly of how it’s just like Bokuto to confess abruptly and wholeheartedly without expecting any reciprocation. He was always looking nowhere but full steam ahead. 

Keiji walks closer to Bokuto, and with every step, he feels his confidence grow, unfurling like a bud coaxed open by the sun. 

His heart is strangely calm. 

When he stands in front of him, Keiji reaches out to cup Bokuto’s face with his hands.

“Bokuto,” he says seriously. "Please take care to remember this.” His hands move with the motion of Bokuto’s nod. He stares at Keiji as if nothing short of an earthquake could tear his eyes away. “I don’t like you because you can read. I like you because you’re a brilliant, kind-hearted, passionate, impossible man who makes me laugh, loves volleyball more than life and, for reasons I can’t understand, thinks Furbies are cute.” 

Keiji brushes his thumb over the line of his jaw, gentle, as Bokuto leans into the touch. 

“I can’t believe you went through all those books for me,” he murmurs. “Bokuto Koutarou, you are—” a laugh escapes his mouth “—you are amazing,” he says, feeling a weight lift from his chest with his confession.

Bokuto breathes his name, reverent.

Hearing it so close, with Bokuto held in his hands, Keiji feels want surge in his chest, vast and wide and ever-expanding. 

For once, Keiji isn’t afraid. 

He leans in and kisses him. 

One of Bokuto’s hands finds its way to his neck, the other hugging his waist, steadying them as they embrace. The sounds of the city, the traffic and the pedestrians, melt into the background, fading insignificantly against the soft press of Bokuto’s lips between his own.

They pull apart, catching their breath, and Bokuto touches their foreheads together. 

“Akaashi?” 

“Mm?” 

Nose to nose like this, Keiji can see every fleck of gold in Bokuto’s eyes. He feels warmed from the inside out, the weight of Bokuto’s stare grounding him to earth when he’s sure that without it, he would be light enough to float. 

_They would have to scrape me off the sky_ , Keiji thinks dizzily. 

He feels incandescent. 

Bokuto exhales. His voice is soft with awe. 

“It’s snowing.” 

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: kitaeun


End file.
